BY GREG McCARTAN
Socialist workers who are members of industrial unions have taken a goal of selling 500 copies of the new book from Pathfinder, Ernesto Che Guevara's Episodes of the Cuba Revolutionary War - 1956-58, by April 1. The article by Paul Mailhot elsewhere in this issue discusses this goal and the campaign to sell Pathfinder books by worker-Bolsheviks in the United States.
Socialists in many cities are also taking goals to sell the book to young people, readers of the Militant, and those engaged in strikes, social protest action, and other political activity. Final goals for the sales campaign should be sent to the Militant business office by February 20. The campaign will run up to April 1, the eve of the Young Socialists national convention. Goals are to include all sales since the book was released last month - including the pre-publication offer.
The articles below describe some of the results of this campaign so far, and the discussions by communists on the job with co-workers on the Cuban revolution and the fight of the working class to organize to make a revolution and take power in the United States as well.
Please send reports on sales totals to the Militant business office by 12:00 noon each Tuesday.
Ellen Berman in San Francisco reports:
The campaign to sell Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary
War - 1956-1958 got a boost in the San Francisco Bay Area
last week at events on Cuba. A group that made a trip to Cuba
sponsored by Global Exchange reported back to meetings, and
Sergio Martínez of the Cuban Interests Section was on a
speaking tour in the area.
Two union members bought the Episodes at a meeting of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers (OCAW) where Martínez spoke. Five more copies were sold to other OCAW members who are in the midst of contract negotiations on the job at several refineries in the Bay Area. A literature table featuring Episodes was set up at a public meeting for Martínez at the Mission Cultural Center. In addition to two copies of that book, participants bought copies of New International no. 10, featuring "Imperialism's March toward Fascism and War" and the Spanish-language edition of How Far We Slaves Have Come, speeches by Fidel Castro and Nelson Mandela in Cuba.
At a Militant Labor Forum entitled, "Report Back on Cuba. Celebrating the 37th Anniversary of the Cuban Revolution," one of several panelists who participated in the Global Exchange tour joined the Pathfinder Readers Club and bought Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War. Another participant in the tour who attended the forum visited the Pathfinder bookstore the following day to discuss his impressions of the Cuban revolution. He decided to purchase a copy of Episodes, as well as a Readers Club membership. In addition to books on Cuba, he was interested in the New International no. 10 and The Truth about Yugoslavia.
Attracted by a poster with Che Guevara's picture on it advertising the Episodes book in the window, a young visitor from Georgia came into the San Francisco Pathfinder bookstore. He didn't know who Che Guevara was, but had seen his picture around. As a college student studying the Caribbean, he was very interested in learning more about the Cuban revolution. He decided to buy a copy of the book and a Pathfinder Readers Club membership after finding out that he could get a discount with the membership card at the Pathfinder bookstore in Atlanta.
Ilona Gersh, a Chevron refinery worker in Utah, and a member of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers union, Local 2-931, wrote in:
Enclosed is $23 contributed by two of my co-workers to help finance the Militant reporting team in Cuba.
Both of them bought copies of Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War. One bought it after he and I spent a night shift reading and discussing the first few chapters. He had begun to work through the introduction of the book when it was printed in the Militant several weeks ago. He was pleasantly surprised to find the book very readable. I came back to the control room later that night to find that he had flipped to the back of the book. "Is this written by the same person who started the book?" he asked.
I think he isn't the only one who will learn from the book that it was through making the revolution that the Cuban revolutionaries transformed themselves into socialist men and women with the confidence they needed to lead the workers and peasants to power
The other co-worker is an operator I hadn't yet had a chance to talk politics with. Our discussion started when he saw the book and told me he had seen other Pathfinder books about Cuba in a bookstore in Hawaii, where he grew up. Che was one of his heroes as a youth.
Roni McCann, a sewer and member of UNITE dropped a note to say:
One of the cafeteria tables at the Hugo Boss men's clothing garment shop in Cleveland, Ohio, became a lively center of discussion February 8.
A couple of us were looking at Episodes, and talking about the revolution in Cuba. We called another worker over who is from Ecuador. "Come check out this book I'm reading," I said. He took one look at it and said, "Roni, are you a communist? I didn't know that."
After I told him I am a communist he said he thought it was good because we need all kinds of views. For the few minutes left in the break we talked about Che and the Cuban revolution. Another Militant subscriber added, "If you are fighting for what you believe in and people don't agree with you, they will call you a communist - but it's not bad to be one!"
A worker who immigrated from Romania several years ago, who reads the Militant and often tells me how he never expected capitalism to be so brutal, got a copy of Episodes. "You know," he said, "I had a lot of political education in Romania as a member of the communist youth, but I'm only starting to understand now. You can't understand things that are forced on you."
Mary Martin, a member of the International Association of Machinists who works at Northwest Airlines in Washington, D.C. reported:
In Washington, D.C., a co-worker of mine in the International Association of Machinists who had never expressed interest in the recent French strikes or in the Militant coverage on Yugoslavia walked past a copy of Episodes that was lying on the break room table. When he saw it he backed up to take a closer look.
He sat down and read a couple of chapters and then asked to borrow the book, saying he didn't know much about the Cuban revolution, but he wanted to learn more. He said he did know something about the Chinese revolution, and that after seeing Fidel Castro's speech in Harlem last fall he wanted to check out Cuba. He decided to buy the book.